Traditional weekend home on Lake Livingston gets a stunning modern update

Traditional weekend home on Lake Livingston gets a...

1of22Gary Pittman fell in love with this black and white photography and hired the artist to take photos of trees and other outdoors scenes around Lake Livingston. The art proved to be the inspiration for a major remodeling project that left no room untouched.Photo: Michael Hunter

2of22The kitchen got a dramatic makeover with the removal of a fur down that blocked the view to the lake.Photo: Michael Hunter

3of22Before: The step-down living room had small squaer tile and dark furniture — but a nice view.Photo: Courtesy of David L. Merryman

4of22After: Porcelain tile that looks like wood was used throughout the house, and lighter colors feel more like lake decor.Photo: Michael Hunter

5of22Before: This guest bedroom had plain tan walls, a nondescript bed and a nice painting.Photo: Courtesy of David L. Merryman

8of22Before: The family room had a wall with built-in cabinets, brick and a fireplace.Photo: Courtesy of David L. Merryman

9of22After: Now the wall is covered in rough-hewn, stacked slate — and they still have a fireplace.Photo: Michael Hunter

10of22Before: A view from the dining room into a breakfast nook.Photo: Courtesy of David L. Merryman

11of22After: That nook is now a stylish seating area with a small sofa and midcentury-style chair.Photo: Michael Hunter

12of22Before: The dining table was placed in a different direction and was more traditional in style.Photo: Courtesy of David L. Merryman

13of22After: A collage of black and white photography in the dining room, plus another grouping down the hallway, set the tone for decor in this sophisticated lake home. The new table is slices of walnut with a live edge with chairs covered in mohair.

14of22Before: Since it’s a lakehouse, you enter at the back door, which was this home’s laundry room.Photo: Courtesy of David L. Merryman Interior Design

15of22After: Now, stylish cabinets and a quartzite counter cover up appliances when they’re not in use. When the cabinet doors are closed, you’d never know that you’re in the laundry room.Photo: Michael Hunter

16of22The entrance to the home was challenging because it was an unattractive laundry room. Merryman transformed it with Phillip Jeffries horsehair wallpaper, cabinets that hide the appliances and an on-trend quartzite counter.Photo: Michael Hunter

17of22Marble mosaic tile is the backdrop for the double-sink vanity in the master bathroom.Photo: Michael Hunter

18of22After getting the crow paintings, he purchased some crow sculptures that continue the art theme in his lake home.Photo: Michael Hunter

19of22Pittman fell in love with paintings of crows and his designer David L. Merryman had more made for him.Photo: Michael Hunter

20of22Pittman likes to play backgammon from this pair of chairs at the front of the living room.Photo: Michael Hunter

21of22Performance linen covers the living room furniture, so no one has to worry about sitting around in a wet swimsuit.Photo: Michael Hunter

22of22After: Now the wall is covered in rough-hewn, stacked slate — and they still have a fireplace.Photo: Michael Hunter

For more than a decade, Gary Pittman, his friends and extended family have used his weekend home on Lake Livingston for warm-weather fun: waterskiing, zipping around on Sea-Doos, fishing. They amp it up on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, too, when 20 to 50 people might gather at once.

The 2,500-square-foot home, built in 1970, had been remodeled by a previous owner preparing for retirement — a couple with very different taste. Pittman loved the lake, the big lot and its grand view, and figured he’d someday make it his own.

“I always thought I would tear it down,” said Pittman, an Oklahoma native who has lived in Houston since 2002. “I had a lot of younger nephews and nieces that were going to be coming here, and I wanted everybody to come in and enjoy. You’d walk in with wet bathing suits and life jackets, and it didn’t matter. It’s how everybody lived here.”

For Pittman, it was a slightly longer drive home from work on Friday nights and a place to recharge from his job as a consultant who helps businesses through bankruptcy and corporate restructuring. Much of his work has been in either Houston or Dallas, but he lived in the Carolinas for a while, too.

“My job is stressful, and this is where I come to relax. I’m naturally an introvert, so I have to recharge my battery because the job requires me to be an extrovert,” said Pittman, who considered vacation homes in Galveston and the Hill Country before settling on Lake Livingston. In Houston, he lives at The Warwick in a condo filled with contemporary Donghia furniture.

Pittman may work with numbers, but he’s drawn to interesting art, and when he saw black-and-white photography by Corrie McGovern and James McGavick of MCG Photography in Charleston, S.C., he knew he wanted some of his own to hang at the lake house. He hired the photographers to take pictures of beautiful old trees around the lake, and when the men produced photos of trees, buildings and other sites with a special infrared treatment that gives each a surreal quality, his gallery grew.

You’ll find those photos around the house, including 15 hung in a striking grid by the dining table.

Pittman loved them, and so did his interior designer, David L. Merryman of David L. Merryman Interior Design. The contemporary style of these natural scenes set the tone for a fully remodeled home bathed in sophisticated neutral tones.

“Everybody loves it. They just can’t believe (the change),” Pittman said. “My mother laughs and says I definitely didn’t get my taste from the farm in Carnegie, Okla. That’s probably true, but I don’t know where it came from.”

No room was left untouched, from a kitchen that got a major makeover to a step-down living room that finally got the view it always needed. Bedrooms got major upgrades, and bathrooms were gutted and transformed. One large guest bedroom even got its own bathroom so that Pittman’s Austin-based brother and sister-in-law will be more comfortable and have more privacy when they visit with their kids.

Before the renovation, you entered at the back of the home through a laundry room — so the first thing you saw were a washer and dryer and, quite possibly, dirty clothes. Merryman turned this space into a stylish entry, with the appliances hidden behind cabinet doors and on-trend quartzite counters with a honed, leathered finish.

When Pittman visited Merryman’s office, he admired paintings of crows in an adjoining office. Merryman had artist Mel DeWees create another; it hangs in Pittman’s new foyer on walls covered with Phillip Jeffries horsehair wallpaper and paired with Aerin lamps from Circa Lighting. When you step inside this stylish entry, you would never think that you’re standing in the laundry room.

Before, the kitchen had a large fur down that blocked the view to the outdoors. That came down, and the same quartzite was added to a long bar counter and perimeter workspace. Glossy gray subway tile on the backsplash pops against the white cabinets.

The back-of-the-house family room had standard built-in bookshelves and a brick fireplace. All of that came out, and now rough-hewn stacked slate covers the wall that still includes a sleek fireplace. A large sectional sofa made of butter-soft leather fills the space — a piece that Pittman fell in love with the moment he sat down on it at Restoration Hardware.

Merryman and Pittman added a painting to this assembly, a piece by Texas artist C.J. Davis that’s dark and moody and has the name “Annie” inscribed in the middle of it. Though Pittman owned the piece before he got his puppy, a goldendoodle named Annie, he’s claiming that it’s for her.

A traditional table and chairs were replaced with updated versions, a custom table with a metal base and a top made of slices of rich walnut with live edges. RH chairs covered in mohair — unexpected at a lake house — are grouped around it.

What was once a breakfast nook near the dining area and just off of the kitchen has become a cozy nook with a small sofa and a sleek midcentury-modern chair. Bedrooms are straight out of a boutique hotel: luxe wallpaper, furnishings, bedding and velvet pillows from Houston designer Rusty Arena’s Oushak collection for RH.

Art was sprinkled in, showing Pittman’s affection for farm life from his childhood in paintings of barns, including one Pittman commissioned from John Axton, asking him to create a painting from an old black-and-white photo. He has other barn art by Toby Penney, including a large piece that incorporated pieces of her grandfather’s coveralls.

“I grew up on farms and visiting my grandparents’ farm. I always had fun playing in barns,” Pittman said. “I started collecting art with the John Axton piece. It reminded me of my grandparents’ barn.”

The home’s exterior got an update, too, with a layer or two of gray paint on the naturally yellow-orange brick and a new deck made of ipe, a Brazilian wood that’s resistant to weather and insects.

Diane Cowen has worked at the Houston Chronicle since 2000 and currently its architecture and home design writer. Prior to working for the Chronicle, she worked at the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune and at the Shelbyville (Ind.) News. She is a graduate of Purdue University and is the author of a cookbook, "Sunday Dinners: Food, Family and Faith from our Favorite Pastors."